My name is Ines and I travelled to Spain recently via the Erasmus from Young Entrepreneurs program to learn and collaborate with E://ART on their new cultural residency program. E://ART, (Experimentem amb L’ Art) is a Culture & Arts center based in Barcelona.
They are located in the neighborhood of Gracia, and with around 45 years experience, can be considered one of the oldest contemporary art centers of the neighborhood. I’m thrilled to finally be able to participate and learn directly about this project from Gisela, the leader of the residency program at E://ART.
I have a current long-term dream/project to learn how to start my own residency program in Marseille, but I was looking for some specialised training and advice in the initial steps of the process; especially funding strategies, formatting and proposal writing. So far, this has been a great opportunity as Gisela had in mind to start a brand new residency line, and therefore i have been involved since the very start in developping this idea into a established project.
I have previously lived in Barcelona when I moved there for my Masters Degree in 2023 so I already knew the city quite well, however, this time I moved to a entirely new neighborhood: Gracia, which I have had the opportunity to walk around and visit over the last two weeks.
I also have been trying my best to attend a lot of cultural events around the city, such as DocsBarcelona; a international documentary festival and Arts center: Santa Monica, in an effort to connect with more cultural professionals here.
So far we have been working exclusively just Gisela and me on the project, and I am enthusiastic about maybe meeting and collaborating with other members of E://ART or being able to talk to them as well about the other things that are going on at E://ART. I’ve had a chance to visit their radio station, and they have a really beautiful indoor courtyard where all the artist workshops give on to.
I really appreciate both the autonomy and responsibility that Gisela has accorded to me in making this project, enabling me to make my own proposals on what direction we could go down with the residency proposal. In the next few weeks we will hopefully have figured out the bigger details of what will be the defining factor of this residency.
Thats it for the moment!